Significantly raising the grade of my yard

alaskagal2April 13, 2012

We moved into a new house last summer and the backyard is a disaster. It is filled with small to medium sized birch trees, stumps, and huge exposed tree roots. We also are the last yard at the lowest level of a hill. If that weren't enough, the only neighbor that we share parallel property with(not on the slope), raised their yard about 6 inches above ours. Our neighbor informs us that with thaw, our yard gets significant flooding.

I've been slowly cutting down the trees and plan to take out the rest over the next month.

I plan to add fill to bring us level with the neighbor, and slope the yard evenly away from our house. We have a small strip of muni land that we can easily angle to drain into without doing damage to any of our neighbor's yards.

It's Alaska, and we're coming off the snowiest season on record, so we'll be dealing with thaw for some time yet. When the snow is gone, what is the best way to (on a budget) do this project?

I have access to free sand fill. Can I lay fill of this nature and cover with several inches of topsoil? I'm hoping to simply start with grass that will grow now that there will be sunlight available.

Alaska, that's pretty challenging for turf. Your seeding date is probably going to be around June 1-15th. If you go the bluegrass route cultivar selection is pretty limited due to the extremely short growing season and long periods of snow cover. I'm pretty sure Nugget is the go to since it was developed in Alaska. Rush might be another option due to it's quick spring green up and good late season performance. Alpine and 4-Seasons are a few others you might look at. I'm sure that there are people up there that have experience with grass and will be able to steer you in the right direction.